Puppy Linux Live Reviewed
I had a chance to check out Puppy Linux Live CD today. It sure is small and it boots pretty fast, but I don’t think it’s really suitable for beginner Linux users.
It’s important to note that I reviewed the Live CD only and I did it with a view of how suitable it is for beginner Linux users since that’s what we’re doing around here. The full-blown distro may be completely different and suitable. I don’t know…I didn’t try it.
Onto the Live CD. It was a total bust on my Dell Inspiron 1000. It failed to pick up my USB mouse or my onboard trackpad. The first thing Puppy asks you when the desktop loads is to pick a screen resolution from an available list using the mouse. Well, since neither of the two mice or the onboard trackpad that I tried worked, I was unable to get past this step. I tried CTL-ALT-Backspace to get back to the command line (which worked) and then tried a manual ‘xwin’. That prompted puppy to ask me what type of mouse I had: ps/2 or serial. Neither of those are suitable selections for my USB mouse.
That’s pretty much where the review on my laptop left off. Since I can’t click on anything and the keyboard shortcuts don’t appear to work, I was left staring at the desktop unable to do anything.
I tried Puppy Live on my desktop and it fared better. It booted, recognized my USB mouse (weird…) and keyboard without a problem. It incorrectly offered me the possible screen resolutions for my video card (stating that only 640X480 was available). However, by following the pretty simple instructions I was able to get a higher resolution working. Then I was able to play with the distro itself.
Since it’s a very, very small Live CD (23MB download) I wasn’t realy expecting much in the way of applications. Puppy delivered a standard set of applications that would probably answer the needs of any run of the mill user. There was a graphics program, audio player, some office suite applications, basic Internet tools, and file system browsing utilities. I found the interface a little hard to get around because none of the applications were the standard applications I was used to. For instance, there is no Open Office suite; rather the word processor is Ted, the spreasheet is ABS Spreadsheet, the PIM software is Xcal. Same with the Internet tools; rather than the familiar Mozilla or what have you there are three web browsers installed: Links, Dillo, and Amaya. None of which are very intuitive.
None of that mattered though, since Puppy failed to pick up and use my desktop network card. Yes, it’s WiFi, but still…for me no Internet means no computer.
Puppy Live CD has earned a spot in my Live CD collection for a while. I want to play with it on different machines and see how it reacts. I want to be clear that the lack of the mainstream applications is completely understandable since the object of Puppy Live is to make it as functional and as small as possible. This doesn’t make Puppy Live a bad Live CD, it just makes it that much harder for beginner users to get going with.
With that in mind, I don’t recommend Puppy Live CD as a suitable testing distro for new Linux users. If you can only download one distro today - don’t make it Puppy Live :)
June 14th, 2005 at 3:14 am
Jon’s Note: There was some obviously argumentative flame-bait contained in the first paragraph of this comment. Since it served absolutely no purpose to beginner Linux users, I’ve deleted it. I’ve retained the remainder of the comment which has some value.
[T]he reviewer says that his cd was a 23 megabyte download, so I am wondering where he got it and how old a version he has. The current Puppy 1.0.3 is 60 megabytes, and includes the full Mozilla suite, Abiword, Planmaker free edition, Scribus, and much more. So if the reviewer was using an old version of puppy, then none of the rest of his review applies.
Jon: The commenter is correct in that I had an older version of Puppy. I’ve discovered why I ended up with a smaller (and presumably older) Puppy Live CD: on the Puppy download page (http://www.goosee.com/puppy/download/downpage.htm) the first link at Biblio timed out on me. So, being the good surfer I am, I scrolled farther down the page and discovered the heading ‘Alternative Download Sites’. I chose the first one (http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux/) which claims to be a mirror of Bilbio but in fact, is not. That link points to a directory which contains a bunch of folders named cd-puppy as well as full blown distros. I assumed a Live CD version of Puppy would be in a cd-puppy folder and downloaded an ISO from there. Crazy, eh?
Puppy IS easy to use, is a lot of fun, and has one of the friendliest bunch of people on its user forums that I have ever encountered.
I encourage anyone considering Puppy to download the current version, and judge for themselves, and if they encounter difficulty, then visit the user forums and they will find plenty of help.
Jon: In the face of this new information I will re-evaluate Puppy using a more current version. I thank this commenter for noticing that there was something wrong and bringing it to my attention - however the original first paragraph of your comment was hardly necessary. Just a little tap on the shoulder telling me that something’s not quite right will be sufficient for me to take a second look at something I’ve done.
NOTE: Based on this information, I have re-reviewed Puppy Linux here.
June 19th, 2005 at 10:46 am
I like the way Puppy is set up and all. I have never been able to get Puppy to find and set up my Internet. Ever.
I do not have this problem with any other distros. I would like to be able to use it on a few of the older machines I have but like you, No internet means no machine.
Also Puppy needs to have a very easy install program. The developer of Puppy should look at Mepis for the hardware set up and install configuration.
Just my thoughts.
June 20th, 2005 at 2:16 am
Hi. It is me again.
Downloaded Puppy 1.0.3 today and it gets me on line now.WOOHOO :-)
Will it be possible for more printer drivers to be included in future releases of Puppy?
I use HP and Epson printers because they support open source and Linux. This release of Puppy does not have drivers for any of my printers.
I must say though that Puppy is a nice distro. It does have the old theme like windows 98 but on older systems that works really well.
If you or whoever is working on Puppy could add drivers for the HP Deskjet 3320 and 3745 and the Epson Stylus PhotoR200
printers as well as more for every one else it would be very cool. I would be able to load it on to my brothers old laptop and some of my older machines and use it as the main OS.
I have always thought Puppy was a good looking yet small Linux distro with a good GUI. By biggest problem was the lack on Internet, now that is solved. Printer support would get it in use around this house as a full time OS.
Keep up the good work. I will be passing this copy around.
June 20th, 2005 at 4:18 am
Hi Mike,
Glad to hear that Puppy was able to get you online. I don’t have anything to do with Puppy, I just review the odd distro now and again for suitability as a distro for beginner Linux users.
Puppy is written by a guy named Barry Kauler. There are Puppy forums at his website and one of the forums is for suggestions. You might want to try posting you request for printer drivers in that forum and see what Barry has to say. The direct link to the Puppy forums is: http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/
Thanks for stopping by!
Jon
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:43 pm
I have had the same video problem, only offered low resolution screen. In your article you said you fixed it easy. How? Where did you find that information? Thank you, pseudo colour is terrible! Everything else on the distro is great! Hooked straight into LAN. Saved an on old machine. I heard that 130,000 pc’s are thrown out every day in U.S.!
These mini linux’s could save the environment.
June 22nd, 2005 at 2:48 pm
Hi Warren,
You kind of lost me here…do you mean how did I fix the low resolution video problem on Puppy? Because if so…I didn’t. I did manage to fix it with Fedora Core 2 and Fedora Core 3 worked right out of the box.
I never did get the full 1280×768 resolution my screen can do with FC2, but I did get proper colour at 800×600 by using the generic LCD setting (it might be called Laptop LCD). My biggest problem was that my screen was flickering, I was able to ge that fixed as well by making a manual change to my X configuration file. If you have a flicker, let me know and I’ll dig up the information I used to fix mine. If you don’t have a flicker, but just want to see if you can get higher resolution - try your monitor preferences page in whatever control panel type application your distro has. Try the Laptop LCD, or Panel LCD, or whatever you can find that looks LCD-ish. Wait a minute…are we talking about a laptop?
If we’re not talking about a laptop, try this:
With SuSe I had good luck by opening a terminal window and typing system-config-display. It checks your video card and offers you the settings it thinks it can support. If your card can handle it and system-config-display can read it, then you should be able to set the colour and resolution via that application.
Let me know how it goes…I’ll dig up more info if you need it.
Jon
July 5th, 2005 at 8:27 pm
I had the mouse problem you described with a serial mouse on an old desktop. This was the latest version. Oddly it picked up the builtin mouse on my ThinkPad just fine - i.e. just the opposite of your situation. Eventually we fixed the problem on the desktop, but what was truly frustrating is that there was no apparent way to work in the GUI without a mouse at all - except the kill function which you could turn on with f9 or f10. Otherwise Puppy is interesting and definitely has some potential as a dead machine saver.
July 28th, 2005 at 1:04 am
[…] I admit that I’ve made up the term Slashdot commented. I couldn’t think of a better name for it. Basically, someone who commented on a Slashdot post linked to my review of Puppy Linux. […]